The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity
The answer to the Lord’s reproach, “How is that ye do not understand?” is plainly this: their minds were so full of care about the day’s bread, that they could not think with simplicity about anything else. When the Lord reminded them of what their eyes had seen, and so of what he was and what God was, and of the foolishness of their care, the moment their fear was taught to look up, that moment they began to see what the former words of the Lord must have meant.
The next hour, the next moment, is as much beyond our grasp and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is just as foolish as care for the morrow. Those claims only of the morrow which have to be prepared today are of the duty of today; the moment which coincides with work to be done, is the moment to be minded; the next is nowhere till God has made it.
It was not this and that fault the Lord had come to set right, but the primary evil of life without God, the root of all evils. If a man forget a thing, God will see to that; man is not lord of his memory or his intellect. But man is lord of his will, his action. That forethought only is right which has to determine duty, and pass into action. To the foundations of yesterday’s work well done, the work of the morrow will be sure to fit. Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an archangel.
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